BRIEF
C O R P O R AT I O N
Principal Preparation Matters
How Leadership Development Affects Student Achievement
F
acing a crisis in leadership—marked by high turnover,
difficulties replacing principals, and a perceived lack of
skills among many principals—some public school districts in the United States have looked beyond the traditional
sources of principal candidates. New Leaders was launched
in 2000 to provide a pool of high-performing school leaders
to urban schools through an alternative route. This nonprofit’s innovative program involves active recruitment, rigorous
selection, and residency-based principal preparation paired
with ongoing support and uses a responsive partnership
approach with participating school districts. As of January
2014, 667 individuals prepared and endorsed by New Leaders
had assumed principalships in traditional or charter schools
in ten partner districts across the nation.
In 2006, New Leaders contracted with RAND to conduct an independent evaluation of its principal-preparation
program. The analysis included all principals who have been
prepared by New Leaders since the inception of the program,
comparing outcomes of their students and outcomes of similar
students in other, comparable schools in the same districts.
The centerpiece of the evaluation is a rigorous analysis of the
effect that New Leaders principals have on student outcomes.
Key findings:
• Successful school leadership can play a key role in
supporting teaching and learning, and, with effective
preparation, principals can positively affect student
achievement.
• Although New Leaders showed a positive impact on
student performance, effects varied considerably across
the program’s districts.
• Among the elements that reflect a constructive context for
leadership, New Leaders participants were, on average,
more likely than non-New Leaders principals with similar
years of experience to remain in their schools for three
or more years.
• Lessons from the New Leaders program can guide
decisionmakers considering partnerships with New
Leaders or other providers of training and support for
principals.
Findings
Program Effects Vary, with No Clear Patterns
Effective Leadership Improves Student Achievement
Successful school leadership can play a key role in supporting
teaching and learning; with effective preparation, principals
can positively affect student achievement. RAND researchers
found that students at New Leaders-led schools experienced
larger achievement gains than those at schools headed by nonNew Leaders principals. At the lower grade levels, spending
at least three years in a school with a New Leaders principal
translated to achievement gains of 0.7 to 1.3 percentile points
for a typical student. At the high school level, students in
schools where the New Leaders principal had three or more
years of experience saw gains in reading achievement of about
3 percentile points. This means that a student in the middle
(50th percentile) of the test score distribution would move up
to the 51.3st or 53rd percentile, respectively.
Although New Leaders showed a modestly positive impact
on student performance, effects varied considerably across
districts. The availability of similar leadership training from
alternative sources may have played a role in muting estimates of program effects in some districts. For example, in
Chicago and New York, effects were small and not statistically significant; aspiring leaders in both districts have access
to other programs similar to those offered by New Leaders.
Although certain school conditions were associated with
student achievement gains at the school level—e.g., higher
teacher capacity corresponded with gains in reading and
greater instructional leadership time corresponded with gains
in mathematics—most differences in school-level achievement gains cannot be explained by practices or conditions
that researchers were able to measure.
Creating a Context for Leadership
Several elements reflect a constructive context for leadership.
For example, New Leaders participants were, on average,
more likely to remain in their schools for three or more years,
compared with non-New Leaders principals with similar
years of experience. Prior research suggests that principals
have a more positive effect on student achievement the longer
they stay at a particular school.1
Districts that implement innovative and supportive
policies enabling leadership success can influence all their
principals, not just New Leaders participants. In some districts, New Leaders played a role in efforts to develop or revise
leadership standards, principal-selection criteria, principal
evaluation, and principal support. Many New Leaders principals moved into roles in which they supervise principals, giving
them further influence over principal quality and performance.
When looking at the cost-benefit of any principal-preparation
program, district decisionmakers should take into account
that resources spent on individual principal preparation can
drive change throughout the district through the spillover
effect described above.
Looking Ahead
In 2012 and 2013, all partner districts reported that the
partnership had benefited their districts, and they remained
Tara Béteille, Demetra Kalogrides, and Susanna Loeb, “Stepping Stones:
Principal Career Paths and School Outcomes,” Social Science Research, Vol. 41,
No. 4, July 2012, pp. 904–919; Ashley Miller, “Principal Turnover and
Student Achievement,” Economics of Education Review, Vol. 36, October 2013,
pp. 60–72; Stuart Buck, “Disparities in Principal Effectiveness,” paper presented at Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management fall research
conference, Baltimore, Md., November 10, 2012. As of April 23, 2014:
https://appam.confex.com/appam/2012/webprogram/Paper2199.html;
Damon Clark, Paco Martorell, and Jonah Rockoff, School Principals and
School Performance, National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in
Education Research, Working Paper 38, December 2009. As of April 23, 2014:
http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jrockoff/cmr_principals_calder_
WP38.pdf
1
Image via Andres Rodriguez/Fotolia.
committed to continuing the partnerships in some form.
Lessons from the New Leaders program can guide decisionmakers considering partnerships with New Leaders or other
providers of training and support for principals:
• Principal preservice training is just one ingredient of a
successful principalship. Districts must provide principals with the tools and flexibility they need to improve
student achievement, including resources that enable
them to staff their schools with highly effective teachers.
• Evaluation of cross-district leadership programs should
document implementation differences over time, to
explore impact separately by district, in addition to analyzing aggregate findings.
• Further research is needed to explore how principals’
working conditions contribute to student success.
This brief describes work done for RAND Education documented in Preparing Principals to Raise Student Achievement: Implementation and
Effects of the New Leaders Program in Ten Districts, by Susan M. Gates, Laura S. Hamilton, Paco Martorell, Susan Burkhauser, Paul Heaton,
Ashley Pierson, Matthew Baird, Mirka Vuollo, Jennifer J. Li, Diana Catherine Lavery, Melody Harvey, and Kun Gu, RR-507-NL (available at
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR507.html), 2014. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research institution that helps improve
policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients
and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark. © RAND 2014
www.rand.org
RB-9786-NL (2014)
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